#tadej Pogačar

[clumsysprinter]

the whoosh logo jiggling

[hxvphaestion]

pogi ✨

(gif under cut)

[celuloideycarbono]

X

[tenearthquakes]

pogi.squish

[oneminutefiftysixseconds]

“yeah you see all those professional cyclists who are competing at the highest level of their sport? yeah i'm gonna make them look like amateurs. Again.”

[gridfangirl]

oh my god I have no words x

[alpinelogy]

tdf 2020 stage 20 + every man for himself for @flourbray

[inrng]

[spot-with-all-his-cronies]

some random slovenian guys who definitely have no importance to the sport of cycling

[clumsysprinter]

no comment

[celuloideycarbono]

Tiny Jonas (21 years old) and Tiny Tadej (19 years old, with Samuele Battistella and Marc Hirschi) in the 2018 Zádov Miru /Course de la Paix under 23, held in Czech Republic.

[pinkpogiclub]

pink pogi <3

[oneminutefiftysixseconds]

[gratisdiamanten]

Most people are dual. They pendulate between a hands-up complacent deadness and the bright hateful heat of being alive. Tadej knows that then, above dyads, they hang in triads, stars. Child’s mobiles, God and other things. Cold, yielding, dead. Hot, angry, something. He quivers thinly between. Skill. It must be because he is young. When his brother went cold, they were also young. Then for a brief time he swung into the blinding heat. Perhaps to live. Or he thinks of an equilibrium.

The man drinks at the table, alone, not-real. Not-real how quickly Tadej sees it either that his pendulum is stuck. He is slow, undeliberate and pale. He is thin, with a gold cross on his neck. He has no undershirt: through the tissue cotton the slope of his rib. 

The man pinches the pendant. Trinity in itself which is why he must hold it there, God over his slow heart: Tadej has sharp pattern-recognition. I saw you in a book, once. I saw you on the road, once, maybe with blood. Maybe on the ground. He watches, maybe for a while, then sits.

Slowly the man acknowledges his acknowledgement.

“And you, kid. From Kamnik?�� His voice is open mouthed, wandering. His voice looks while he keeps his eyes in one place.

“Closer to Komenda,” Tadej says.

“Do you smoke?”

“With my father,” he assents, sitting across from him. He looks at Tadej for a while, but if he is thin Tadej is too long in the arms and legs.

“Is there good work on the farms in Komenda?”

“I work in the summer, then I go to school, in Ljubljana. Class of 58.”

He blinks. A sluggish, dark motion. His face is too slender for his hands, which crinkle in the palms paperlike while he pulls a cigarette from the box. The shadow from his eyes pools under his cheeks. Tadej dresses a smile. Takes it in his lips and on his tongue.

“University?”

Tadej looks at him and the motion of his ribs butterflying for his breath, tectonic, slow. He does not move wastefully. This is abnormal, Tadej thinks, to be so stuck. Like a broken clock in some ways. Many such men since the war. Many such men buried in the earth or in time. Five minutes walk south of here there are hundreds under the grass. They of course do not say this. There are many things people can’t say anymore and any more I would have never been able to say.

“I look like I’m still in grammar school?”

The man shrugs. His shoulders point. The curve of a bird’s wing. “I think. Your face.”

“I’m twenty in September.” The ting-shkk of a lighter, and then Tadej sips in the smoke. Hot in his mouth it slips past the inner cooling in his throat, it greets itself in a long curl. 

“Your name?”

“Tadej,” he says. When the man looks expectant (surname?), he just blinks and smiles in response.

“Why do you smile so much, Tadej?”

“Do you think I’m trying to con you?”

“An act,” he says.

“Well. And your name?” The man in response stares. He is still unreal like superstition. He could be handsome, if he were not dead. “What, you think I’ll steal it?”

“Primož.”

“Alright. Why don’t you smile at all, Primož?” He says nothing, pinches his cigarette between his fingers and exhales, one long expiration.

Then Tadej tries: “Do you ever see your headless shadow?”

“I don't believe in superstition. I don’t look,” he replies.

“Okay.” He sighs down smoke. “Can I have coffee?”

“Yes, I’ll pay for coffee.” He goes to the door back to the kitchen, knocks on the frame. The light there falters yellow, cyclically. The woman back there chatters about: it is getting late, Primož. Oh, that is just Tadi. Our little cricket. He talks to everyone. He is like a housecat, he’ll make noise until you feed him.

He comes back with coffee in both of his hands. “There is, ah, a little brandy in it,” he cautions. “But you’ll probably want to sleep soon.”

“Thank you,” he says, honest.

“Now you will have to answer my questions.”

“And you thought I was just an act!”

“Well! What do you study.”

“History.”

“Well, uh. I have heard that the universities. What do they call it. Well, the layoffs.”

“I don’t think very hard about that. I study stories and folklore. I did papers on this, the Ljubljana dragon. You know.”

“Children’s stories,” Primož says, so flatly that it does not even carry the air of skepticism.

“I thought I looked like a child.”

“Well,” he reasons, studying his one hand on the mug. “Now you don’t.” Suddenly, his voice swerves uncomfortable.

Tadej rushes, “Joking”.

[sweetjames]

Carlos Sainz and Tadej Pogačar 😍😍

[alpinelogy]

Tour de France 2024, June 29th - July 21st, from Florence to Nice